Lucas
followed Jenna's Mustang along Highway 11 toward Mayville until they reached an
old run down motel. H-ell Motel is what the sign actually said, although most
of the letters, specifically the ones between the H and the E, were obviously
not working. Or maybe they were just trying to be honest, because the place
certainly looked like hell, in Lucas's opinion.

"Are
you staying here?" asked Lucas as he turned off the engine.

"Yeah,
why?" asked Jenna, who Lucas still thought of as Jed wearing a dress. She
noted the incredulity in Lucas's voice and looked around to see what he meant.
Peeling paint on the doors, weeds growing through the cracks, cement stairs
slanting oddly to the right. Heaven only knew how many cockroaches they'd find
inside. Okay, so her question was obviously rhetorical.

For
a brief instance Lucas considered inviting her to stay with him. He opened his
mouth, intending to say that, but caught himself before he could speak.

"What?"

"Nothing. I think I can talk Katon into letting you
stay with him," he said. "He's got an extra room. He'll probably try
to molest you a little, but..." his voice trailed off.

"But
it's better than this place?"

Lucas
grinned and then laughed when he saw that his friend agreed. "Yeah, about
anything is probably better than here. What made you pick this place?"

Jenna
was quiet, her face turning sober. For an instant Lucas thought she might cry. He.Whatever. "I don't have
very much money," she admitted. "It's all I could afford."

He
wanted to be sympathetic. The person he was looking at had once been his best
friend, after all. But he couldn't. At least not as much as
he wanted. Despite feelings that Jedidiah had betrayed him by leaving,
he had still wanted to keep in touch. Who knows? Maybe buried deep down inside
him was a part that still wanted to believe Jed would come back to him some
day. So he knew that Jed had a good paying job and lived comfortably on an
engineering salary. This person he was looking at now had not only turned his
friend into a girl, but had also apparently squandered all his money. Bitch, he
thought.

Lucas
looked around, allowing his indifference to settle into place. "Yeah,
well, Katon probably won't charge you very much," he offered. "He
might even let you stay there for nothing." He resisted the urge to add
something about Katon possibly accepting sexual favors in lieu of rent, but
decided that might be needlessly cruel.

"I'd
want to pay," she said.

"Yeah,
well, that's between you and him," said Lucas coldly.

Jenna
looked hurt. She was hurt. She looked like she was on the verge of tears again.
Lucas hated himself for treating her that way. Jed may have betrayed him, and
turned his friend into a girl and stolen all his money, but somewhere
underneath all of that wasn't this the same person he'd once wanted to spend
the rest of his life with? He decided to let his heart soften toward her just a
little. It was just for a few more minutes. And then he'd be on his way back to
his home in southeast Tennessee and he could forget all about Jed ever
returning. It obviously wasn't going to happen now. He parked his bike,
lowering the kickstand, and said, "Let's make sure your key fits before I
go."

The
key fit, the door opened, the water came out of the faucets at what seemed to
be the right temperature. The sheets on the bed looked clean and pressed. The
TV only picked up a few channels, but that was to be expected this far from a
big city. "I wasn't planning on watching a lot of TV anyway," said
Jenna. She looked hopeful.

Lucas
noticed her hopeful look and wondered why. Didn't she remember he was gay? He
had actually been hoping, when Jed had written saying he wanted to meet him,
that the evening might end with sex, and that he might be spending the night.
He knew Jed was a Mormon, and had supposedly left all that behind him the day
he left Mayville right after graduating. He also knew that people changed. Or didn't change, depending on your viewpoint. Something in
the letter made him hope that was the case here - that Jed wanted to see him in hopes of
reviving their teenage romance.

But
then he'd figured out that the girl at Jo & Lou's was actually Jed, and so
that had answered that question. It didn't answer the question of why Jed had
wanted to see him in the first place, but by then Lucas had pretty much lost
interest in getting answers to any more questions. One answer a day seemed
sufficient.

With
nothing much left to say, Lucas was ready to make his exit when Jenna finally
asked, "Lucas, uh, would you, uh, like to see my girls?"

"These,"
she replied, pointing toward her breasts. "Do you want to see them?"

Lucas
finished closing the door. "Do you want to show them to me?"

"It's
kind of why I drove halfway across the country," she said.

Lucas
felt his dick starting to get hard."Yeah, sure.
I'd like to see them."

Although
Lucas thought of himself as being gay, he was really bisexual. After Jed, he
had tried to have relationships with a few women. Women were naturally
attracted to him. He was good looking, with boyish charm, and a sensitive
nature that appealed to a lot of women. He learned he could pick up a woman at
a bar just by watching her from across the room for a while. It was almost too
easy, he thought. Picking up a cute guy was much more of a challenge.

And more rewarding, if you asked him. As much as he might enjoy the site of a
naked woman, with their shapely curves and smooth skin, he much preferred the
site of a stiff cock, begging for attention, wanting to be touched, and
fondled, and sucked and... other stuff. And with
women, it seemed like once he was alone with them, there wasn't anything to
say. Things turned awkward. He never had that problem with a guy. It seemed
like being alone with a guy just made things feel that much more intimate.

But,
for now, the offer to see Jed-now-Jenna's tits, well, he figured he could
handle that. It would be interesting. Educational, certainly.
And he had driven all the way from Utah to show them to him, so it would be
wrong to say no. And he really was interested in seeing just how much his
friend had changed.

Jenna
blushed shyly. "There's not really an easy way to do this, I guess, so
I'll just take my shirt off and show them to you."

And
then he was looking at them. They were really nothing more than two swollen
mounds, each capped with a dark brown nipple about the size of a quarter. Lucas
could see the vague outline of a bikini tan surrounding each mound and a faint
strip of white connecting them.

"You
can touch them," she said gently. Lucas would claim she begged him to
touch her. Jenna herself would deny begging, but would probably admit that she
did thrust her chest forward slightly as she said it.

He
reached out and began fondling Jenna's small but definitely-there
breasts. He ran his fingers across her sensitive nipples, creating a shiver
that made her close her eyes and moan. "Ooo,yeah. Just like that."

It
occurred to him that she had the smallest breasts he'd ever seen on anyone who
wasn't a male. The side of him that felt betrayed by her wanted to point that
out as a way of lashing back at the pain she and Jed had caused him over the
years. But he restrained himself. He flicked his finger across her tender
nipples again, and tweaked them softly between his fingers. "Does that
feel good?" he asked. It was obvious that it did, although there was a
small possibility her moans of pleasure were actually moans of pain.

"Yes."

"Want
me to suck on them?" he asked, guiding her onto the bed.

"Yes."
This time even Jenna would admit she was probably begging.

It
would have taken less than five minutes for Lucas to bring Jenna to what she
called a girly-gasm. A body spasm that, to her, felt
more incredible than any orgasm she'd ever had as a male. Unfortunately, that
was two or three minutes more than the time he actually did take, sucking on
her soft nipples. At exactly the point where she could feel the sensation
building up into that intense quiver of sensations that she knew would soon
explode from within, Lucas suddenly stopped, rolling her onto her back and
standing up from the bed. "Jed, I need to go," he said.

"Call
me Jenna," she begged.

For
a moment, Lucas considered lying back down beside his one time friend, ripping
his clothes off and fucking him harder than he'd ever fucked anyone before. He
wanted to rape him. Rape him, and then forgive him. Forgive him for leaving
him. Forgive him for becoming a woman. Forgive him for everything and then take
him back and hold on to him forever, the way he'd always wanted. That was all
he'd ever really wanted from Jedidiah King, who was now asking him to call him
Jenna.

No,
it was too late. "Maybe some other time," he said.

As
the door closed behind him, and she heard the Indian's motor rev up, Jenna sank
to the floor and began to cry.

* * * * *

Jenna
felt like she'd lost everything. She'd gambled on Lucas, betting he would take
her back, and now she could hear his motorcycle pulling out of the parking lot.

Everything.

She'd
quit her job. Jed's job. Nobody at her work knew about
her secret life as Jenna. That was no small feat, because the girls, her two
small breasts, were getting bigger all the time. And bigger
meant harder to hide. She hadn't cut her hair in over a year, and now it
was down nearly to her shoulders. People had to be wondering about that. The
hormones were having other effects, as well. Her skin was getting softer, and
she'd definitely started getting curves in places where boys just aren't
supposed to have curves.

She probably could have told them, and
continued working there as a transsexual. The threat of a gender discrimination lawsuit would see to
that, even if she never actually brought it up. But, face it, lawsuits aren't
going to make your conservative co-workers suddenly love and admire you, and in
Mormon Utah, conservative values demanded that men be men and women be women
and anybody caught in the middle better do some repenting quick.

No,
it was easier to quit and move to Tennessee, she figured, than deal with the
fallout of being transgendered in Utah.

Perhaps,
she thought as she sat there and considered the train-wreck that had become her
life since leaving Utah, that was a decision she might
want to rethink.

Along
with losing a very good paying job, she was also on the verge of losing her
church membership. A member all her life, there was no way that would continue
once her church leaders learned that she had decided to change gender. You can
be a lot of things and still be a good Mormon, but transsexual isn't one of
them. Of course at this point, her church leaders didn't know, and Jenna was in
no hurry to bring it to their attention. Better to just run away for a while,
and let it happen when she was ready for it.

Because,
frankly, there was a much bigger problem to face than work and church, as far
coming to terms with her new sexuality was concerned. That was her family. As
Jed, she'd come from a very loving and close family. And a
very religious one. Her father, Jed's father, had been a mission
president. That was one reason Jed had been sent to Mayville when he was in
high school. Not that his parents didn't love him or want him, but because he
needed time to figure out who he was, and being on a mission in Sweden with his
parents wasn't the time or place for that.

Even
as Jenna sat slumped against the door in her hotel room, her parents were on
another mission. This time to Mongolia. Jed/Jenna
couldn't even imagine what it was like in Mongolia. They weren't due back until
fall of that year. He figured he could put off telling them until then.

Uh, Mom, Dad, I decided I
wanted to be a girl from now on.
Yeah, that was going to be a pleasant conversation.

As
Jed, and even now as Jenna, he'd always had a way of manipulating things from
behind the scenes, making it look as if he had nothing to do with the result,
when in fact it was what he'd planned all along. He'd done that a lot with
Lucas. Lucas thought of it as good Jed and bad Jed. There wasn't really a good
Jed or a bad Jed; there was just Jed, wanting to please everyone and not sure
how to do that and keep himself happy in the process. And so a lot of times it
seemed like he had two personalities.

Which was true, in a way. Just that nobody, including his
psychologist uncle, Uncle J, ever considered that one of those personalities
was female.

She
hadn't told her parents about the hormones, or letting her hair grow, or
quitting her job, or even about donating all her boy clothes to charity before
leaving Utah. Yeah, that had been her plan to keep her from backing out - make
it as hard as possible to go back to being a boy.

"Be
careful what you wish for, for you will truly get it." She could still
hear Brother Ross telling them that during early morning seminary in high
school. Good old Brother Ross. He'd probably said it more than once, or maybe
it was just the conditions under which he'd said it, but the words had sunk in.
Jed-now-Jenna remembered them now, years later, even though she couldn't
remember very much else of what Brother Ross had taught them.

She
smiled. Softly, a little bit. The words were a painful reminder that the thing
she had wished for had turned out to be just as unpleasant as Brother Ross had
warned. But just thinking about that kindly gentleman helped her forget her own
troubles for a moment. She almost wished he was here now, to give her some of
his homespun wisdom and advice. "I could really use some help right
now," she whispered, as if he were right there to hear.

But
he wasn't, and Jenna finally heaved herself up from the floor, realizing that
if she was ever going to solve her problems, she'd have to do it alone.

Getting
up, she went over to her suitcase and found the electric drum set she'd brought
along for entertainment. She plugged in the headphones so that she wouldn't
disturb the motel's other guests - not that there were any - and proceeded to
pound out her frustrations by playing along with some of her favorite songs.

A
few times she even let herself sing along. Singing wasn't what she did best
when it came to music, but she could at least carry a tune without mangling it.
Especially if there was someone there to help her, and help
her find her pitch. Singing made her forget what it was that made her so
unhappy, and forty minutes of drumming helped her work up a pretty good sweat
that helped too to ease her mind. It probably had something to with endorphins
and stuff, she figured.

Which reminded her, it was time for her
nightly hormone treatment: hormone cream and one of the pills she'd started
using without a doctor's approval.
The cream had been easy; just go online and order it. No prescription
necessary. And, to her surprise, it had worked. At first, as Jed, he'd been
doubtful. But after a few weeks of regular use, he noticed a definite increase
in how sensitive his nipples were. At first they just itched, making him wonder
if he was having an allergic reaction. But then they'd gotten tender, and he
knew he either needed to stop using the cream or face the reality of a life
with breasts.

He
chose the latter.

A
few more weeks went by before he noticed the swelling. His nipples didn't look
all that much bigger, and he wished he'd been smart enough to measure them
before he started, just so he'd have something to compare them with. But after
nearly two months, there was no denying the swelling he felt.

Or the pleasure of fondling himself.the itchiness had
soon subsided, not quite as quickly as it had started, and was eventually replaced
with a tenderness and sensitivity that was as erotic and sensual as it was
painful. No, MORE erotic and sensual than painful. It would have, definitely,
been painful, if not for the sensuality. But the feelings of sensuality seemed
to outweigh everything else, making his new breasts a pleasure to caress and
fondle.

The
feelings of having his nipples stroked just seemed to send shivers of
excitement all through his body. And the shivers of excitement all through his
body just seemed to make his nipples respond that much more. It took some
doing, but he could literally make himself cum, just by playing with his
nipples.

Wearing
a bra to work was... Well, it was what he should have done. He noticed it the
most when he was walking up and down stairs. It was almost a painful feeling as
his breast tissue would bounce, pulling on the underlying muscle in a way he
wasn't used to. But it was a pain he relished, because he knew its cause. He
definitely was getting female breasts.

The
pills, like I say, had been trickier. They were actually birth control pills,
and they belonged to Mrs. Gibson, his next door neighbor and landlady. He'd
been at her house one day while she was on vacation, watering her plants and
feeding her cat, when he'd noticed the prescription for birth control pills.
With trembling hands, he'd picked it up and examined it, as a plan began
formulating in his head.

The
prescription was for two years, and had just been issued by her doctor.
Gynecologist, Jed corrected, feeling his stomach doing flip-flops at what he
was considering. "Just issued" meant, in this case, that the prescription
was nearly one month old, with none of the monthly prescriptions having been
actually used.

Bu
using a pharmacy across town, one that was unlikely to be connected with Mrs.
Gibson's own pharmacy, he just might get away with it. He would claim to be
there to pick up pills on her behalf, and then keep them for himself. It might
work. It did work. For nine months, neither Mrs. Gibson nor the pharmacist said
a thing. He had no idea if Mrs. Gibson had simply forgotten about the
prescription, or if she had her gynecologist re-write it, telling him she'd
lost it. Or maybe she decided that after divorcing Mr. Gibson there really
wasn't much need for birth control pills. But, whatever the reason, Mrs.
Gibson's birth control pills became Jed's turn-me-into-a-girl pills.

He
hadn't actually started taking the pills until six weeks later, two weeks after
picking up the first of twenty-three refills. By that time he figured if anyone
was going to say something, they would have said it, and since no one was
saying anything, he thought he just might get away with it.

He'd
considered making it ten weeks. That was his original plan. Ten weeks would
have given him the original prescription and two refills; three fraudulent
pharmacy visits in all. If no one said anything after three times, he was
pretty sure he'd be safe.

But
six weeks living with pills that had the power to turn him into a girl was too
much to resist. Plus by that time the hormone cream was definitely doing its
job, and he knew it was time to either get serious about changing gender, or
abandon the idea completely. It was already starting to cause problems with his
ability to live life as a man. Appearing in public without a shirt on was out
of the question now and had been for some time. No, he either had to go back to
the way he was, or keep going the way he'd chosen.

It's
hard to say what a person who is transgendered is thinking at a time like that.
If you've never been there - which describes most of the world's population -
it's hard to understand the desperation.

As
Jed stood at his bathroom sink, studying the pills he'd managed to obtain, and
realizing that one of them was about to go in his mouth, he considered his
choices.

As
far as Jed was concerned, there was no choice. He could continue living a life
that was, in a word, hell. Miserable. That's another
good one-word description. Or he could try something else.

Ever
since he'd first started on-line chats, Jed had figured out that his life made
much more sense to him if he was female. He didn't choose it; it chose him. At
least that's how it felt to him.

Ever
since Joey had talked him into wearing a bra, Jed's life had never been the
same. He'd tried to deny it. It wasn't like he'd spent all his life wishing he
was female, either. But every now and then he'd remember things. Little things. Like wearing his mother's nightgowns, or that
time with Lucas and the Jedry brothers, when they'd played strip poker and he'd
been wearing panties. He could even remember wishing a few times that he had
breasts, or that his dick would fall off. And now, he grinned, he was getting
his wish.

But
maybe the most telling moment was the day shortly after he moved into the
apartment across from Mrs. Gibson. For several days he couldn't get
comfortable. At first he figured it was just the newness of where he was
living. But more than a week later, the feeling persisted. In fact, it grew
even stronger. Jed would describe it as restlessness.

Finally
one night, in desperation, as the hockey game was about to start, he opened up
a sack of clothes he'd brought with him and pulled them out, laying them across
the bed: a black cotton bra, black cotton bikini panties, black thigh high
stockings, and a black miniskirt. Not sure why he was doing it, he put them on.
Still wearing them, he made a bowl of popcorn and settled down on the couch to
watch the hockey game.

Immediately,
not almost immediately and not eventually, and not soon, but immediately, that
feeling of restlessness disappeared, and Jed felt, for the first time, that he
was home. That's when he knew he had a
problem.

So
as he stood at the mirror that day several months before, with Mrs. Gibson's
pill in his hand, he pondered his choices. He could, of course, do nothing,
return the pill to its package and throw everything away. That was certainly
one solution. If not exactly a realistic one. Jed
imagined himself doing that, trying to determine what his
feelings would be if he did. The best way to describe them, he realized, was
loneliness, despair, and resignation. Life would go on as it had for all the
twenty-eight years of his life just as it always had.

Jed
shook his head, simultaneously saying no to the image, and clearing it from his
mind. No, life as it had always been was too bleak to consider. Life as it had
always been was life without hope. The pill, he knew, was going into his mouth.
It was the only way he could continue to live. That was his only real choice.

Like
I say, if you've never been there, it's hard to understand just how desperate
you can feel. The best way to describe it, I guess, is a question in a gender
identification survey I once saw. The question asks you to imagine that there
are two medical procedures, both completely safe, both completely effective.
One will change your way of thinking to match your outward appearance, while
the other will change your outward appearance to match your way of thinking.
The question asks which you would choose, and why.

To
Jed, and others like him, the choice is obvious. The first one, having your way
of thinking changed to match your outward appearance, feels like a form of
death. "If I chose that," Jenna once told me, "I'd lose the part
of me that makes me who I am. I'd be someone else."

That
was Jed's reasoning as he examined the little pill that was about to go inside
him and start changing his life. He wasn't choosing it, it had already chosen
him. He was only choosing to live the only way he knew he would be able to. As a woman.

Those
were Jenna's thoughts as she stood topless before the mirror in a Tennessee
motel room, looking at the pill she was supposed to take for that day. So far
they'd done their job. Those were her thoughts as she looked at the body that
was now decidedly feminine. Those were her thoughts as she swallowed the pill,
stating yet again, to no one in particular, her
determination to live the rest of her life as a female. Those were also her
thoughts as she massaged the hormone-laden cream into her soft breasts, feeling
the familiar tingle that was probably more the effect of nipple stimulation
than anything else, but which she liked to imagine was the tingle of hormones
changing her body.

Yes,
she was choosing, again, to be a woman. Even if, in the end, it cost her
everything she could imagine; her family, her friends, her church membership,
yes, even Lucas; it was the only choice she could possibly make. For the
briefest of instants, before throwing the pill into her mouth, she considered
the ironic fact that she could get it all back if she just quit taking the
pills.

"But
that's just crazy," she thought, and popped the pill into her mouth.

* * * * *

On
the other side of the door, Lucas took two steps and paused. For the briefest
of moments he fully intended to turn around and go back, forgive Jed for becoming
Jenna, forgive Jenna for taking Jed away from him, and make a determined effort
to become a heterosexual.

Four
seconds later he was mounting his motorcycle. Twelve seconds later he was
headed back to his home in southeast Tennessee.

The
three-hour ride in the dark gave Lucas time to think. Not that he wanted to,
actually, but every time he tried turning on some music to keep his thoughts
off of Jed, it just seemed like a bunch of needless noise and he'd end up
turning it off again.

Did
it bother him that Jed had decided to become a girl? Not really. It was
probably more that he'd gone and done it without even letting Lucas know. If he
let himself think about it, he guessed there'd probably been signs of it all
along. Lucas had known a couple of other transsexuals, and they'd told him more
or less the same thing, that they started off as basically normal males, but
somewhere along the way the urge to switch genders had taken over. It bothered
him that Jed hadn't felt him worthy enough to confess such a thing.

He
let himself think about Jed's small breasts. Not Jed. What had he called
himself? Jenna? He had to get used to thinking of Jed as Jenna. And as a girl. That was weird. Maybe if he hadn't ever known
him as a guy it would be easier. Hell, he thought, I had sex with him as a guy.

And
turned down the opportunity to have sex with him as a girl, he realized. Why
had he done that? Was it because he was gay? Lucas dismissed that idea as
quickly as it had come to him. Although he identified himself as gay, he knew
he was actually at least partly bisexual. Girls were sexy. There was no denying
that. Seeing a naked girl aroused him. It's just that feeling aroused by one
and doing something about it were two very different things.

Had
he been aroused seeing Jed's tiny breasts? The tingle in his crotch as he
recalled just what he'd seen told him he was. Jed had called them "his
girls" He thought he was going to throw another surprise his way, showing
him pictures of two daughters he'd fathered, also without so much as telling
him.

That's
what really bothered Lucas. It was that way Jed did things without telling him.
It had been like that ever since high school. Sure, he was a couple thousand
miles away once Jed went back to Utah. But there was email. There were phones.
He didn't see why Jed had to suddenly act as if everything they'd done in high
school had been meaningless. It certainly hadn't been meaningless to him. And
he was pretty sure he'd never let Jed think any differently.

And
then Jed went on a church mission.

Okay,
he'd kind of expected that. It was in Jed's plan all along to go on a mission
as soon as he turned nineteen. Not that Lucas really understood what a mission
was. Jed still wrote him letters. But the letters were different. Naughty Jed was
no longer there. Lucas liked good Jed, of course, but it was naughty Jed that
excited him.

Jed's
mission was in North Carolina, of all places. Tar Heel
country. God's country, if you asked Lucas. He'd had taken it as a sign
that Jed still belonged to him. Once his two-year mission was over, Lucas was
positive Jed would come back to him. So positive that he'd arranged to meet Jed
one day while he was on his mission. Jed, who as a missionary preferred to be
called Elder King, had seemed less than thrilled with the idea, but had
eventually agreed to meet him one day on his weekly day off. One day off a
week! Lucas couldn't imagine how anyone could live with just one day off a
week.

And
it wasn't even a whole day off. When Lucas had suggested they meet someplace
for dinner - hoping it might lead to a romantic twilight walk or something,
Elder King had informed him that his day off ended at five o'clock. After that
it was back to work.

And
so they'd met, in the middle of the day, on the UNC campus. Lucas couldn't
think of a much better place to confirm Jed's return than right there in front
of Dean Smith's basketball trophies. Yeah, Smith was gone, and Williams was
doing a pretty good job with the program so far, and promised to keep it at the
same high level as Smith had, but Lucas couldn't help imagining that if God
himself were to come to Earth, he'd probably come in the form of Dean Smith.
Okay, maybe that was a little bit blasphemous, he admitted, but the truth was
probably not that far off.

Except
it was a Monday and the arena was locked, so there was no meeting in front of
the trophy case. And then there was that other fellow. Lucas couldn't remember
his name now, but he was a missionary, too, and he and Jed were dressed the
same, in white shirts and ties. "Hey, this is me. You didn't need to put
on a tie," Lucas had joked. But Jed, Elder King, had said it was the way
they always dressed.

The
meeting had gone wrong from the very beginning. He'd imagined greeting his high
school friend - his high school lover and sweetheart - yes, sweetheart was the
only way to describe the relationship they'd had - with a hug. Possibly even a
kiss. If it had been in front of the trophy case, with no one else around, yes,
a kiss was quite likely, if Lucas had had anything to say about it.

But
that other missionary, Elder Whatshisname, had been
watching them like a hawk. He literally wouldn't let Jed out of his sight, and
Jed seemed to want it that way. Every time Lucas tried to get Jed to go
somewhere private with him, Jed would invite his companion along. Companion. Yeah, that's what he called him.

And
the greeting! No hug! Just a handshake. The stiffest,
coldest handshake he could ever remember getting. From
anyone. Not bone crushing, but firm. It was obvious Elder King was
well-practiced at shaking hands. What? Was he practicing to be a politician
some day?

And
that's when Lucas realized he'd lost Jed. Not even Dean Smith and the UNC
campus could bring him back. Whatever they'd had in high school was gone. Relegated to nothing more than memory status. And even Jed's
memory of those times seemed to be suspect; he only wanted to talk about the
"good' times - the times when naughty Jed hadn't been there and good Jed
had been in charge.

Lucas
shook his head trying to clear it of the memory. He reached over and turned on
the radio in another futile attempt to drown out his thoughts of Jed.

After
that meeting in North Carolina, Lucas had quit responding. At
least emotionally. He still went through the mechanics of answering
Jed's letters, but without nearly the enthusiasm or interest he'd once
had. He became distant and moody. He
became a recluse. It wasn't that he wanted to be like that. It's just that
nothing really seemed to matter anymore.

He
turned to his work, programming computers. That gave him some comfort.
Computers were predictable. They did whatever you told them to do. If something
went wrong, all you had to do was look at the program they'd been given, and
see where you'd made a mistake, telling them to do the wrong thing. Once you
found that, you fixed it, and everything was right again. Computers didn't tell
you one thing one day and then do something completely different the next day.
A computer wouldn't betray you, telling you they were your best friend, and
then stabbing you in the back later.

They
certainly wouldn't forget to tell you something as important as wanting to
change from being a boy to being a girl, and then call you up all the sudden
and ask you to meet them somewhere, and then see how surprised you acted when
you learned they were a girl now and not a guy. Yeah, he guessed that did
bother him just a little bit. He twisted the throttle, revving the bike's
engine and sending them hurtling down the deserted highway, finally edging the
speedometer up over a hundred, while he finally got the radio volume up high
enough to stop himself from thinking.